Do you mean moving the search options to Special:Search, and making them "sticky", so that the checkboxes you tick there are saved between searches?

If so - this is actually on our to-do list as part of http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Micro_Design_Improvements (or should be) - if it's not it'll be part of the Preferences reorganisation later this year. I'll see if we can bump it up a bit in priority.

(In reply to comment #1)

Do you mean moving the search options to Special:Search, and making them
"sticky", so that the checkboxes you tick there are saved between searches?

No. That's bug 31881; this is about the tab aka profile, not the checkboxes.

So this would be more "making the tabs sticky"?

(In reply to comment #2)

(In reply to comment #1)

Do you mean moving the search options to Special:Search, and making them
"sticky", so that the checkboxes you tick there are saved between searches?

No. That's bug 31881; this is about the tab aka profile, not the checkboxes.

If you checked "correct" searchNs checkboxes in Special:Preferences, a profile can be shown as being used.

For example you choose File namespace, then the Multimedia profile is used when you perform a default search.

(In reply to comment #3)

So this would be more "making the tabs sticky"?

No: this, together with bug 31881, is a blocker for "making the tabs sticky".

Currently there's no option at all for the tabs, and this bug asks one to be
created in the first place, be it in Special:Preferences (easiest; could then
be set site-wide in $wgDefaultUserOptions which is what I asked in the URL), in
Special:Search itself (bug 31881) or whatever.

(In reply to comment #4)

If you checked "correct" searchNs checkboxes in Special:Preferences, a profile
can be shown as being used.

You've not clicked the URL have you? Profiles are not always about namespaces, profile=translation isn't.